Our bus ride to Hat Yai was easy, aside from my keeping the bus from leaving behind Tatjana with the sticky rice and banana she had bought us at a stop. It was covered in flaky coconut and delicious. Definitely worth yelling, "wait, wait, please, wait" at a bus driver for. Once in Hat Yai, we needed to get to Penang Besar to cross the border into Malaysia. No problem, right? Tatjana and I were making this up as we went along. We had no Malaysian guidebook, no Malaysian cash, no idea as to how to get from the border to the nearest town, but were we worried? It was 4:30pm and we were only 50 kilometers away. No biggie.
The bus came. It was not the minibus I was expecting, which would just rush over to the border and be done with us. We should have waited for that tourist special. This was a proper, though dilapidated, bus, and it took us on a multi-hour journey through Hat Yai's rush hour traffic and to every little collection of plywood huts along the highway to the border. We finally got to the border, which was still open to our great relief. We got stamped out of Thailand and started walking across no-man's land or whatever that blank bit of land between two countries is called. It's at this point that we realize that we are the only ones walking this thing. There's not tons of folks crossing to begin with, but none of them are on foot. They got wheels. We don't. As we meander down the road with our backpacks, we both were glad we weren't doing this alone. It wasn't scary, but man, crossing a fairly desolate border at night on foot? Not the most fun you can have in the world by yourself.
Once we get into Malaysia, we pepper the immigration officials. How far is the next town? Is there a bus? Taxis? ATMs? Once again, Malaysian helpfulness shows its lovely face. One of the guys shows us the way to the bank, calls a taxi for us, and gives us a recommendation for a place to stay in Kangar, which is the closest town, 30 km away. How nice is he? In Kangar, the hotel is over our budget, but our taxi driver has another place - Hotel Malaysia. Now, the Hotel Malaysia ain't bad, but it kinda had a creepy vibe at 10pm. But we were desperado, and so we took it.
The next morning, we needed to nosh and figure out how to get to Langkawi, a large island off the northwest coast of Malaysia. Along the way, we met another lovely Malaysian, Toman, who treated us to breakfast - black bean dumplings and hot coffee - gave us loads of info, and told us we should check out Chinese New Year in Penang, another island just south of Langkawi. A plan was forming in our minds....
We made it to the coast on a local bus and somehow scored the last two seats on the largest passenger ferry in Malaysia. Tatjana and I felt like our luck was changing. At least we hoped so, this trudging around to find a place everywhere we went was getting old. Unfortunately, it wasn't over. Langkawi is a funny mix. It's got about 100,000 locals, and it's very popular with both Malaysians and foreigners as a tourist destination. The entire island is duty free, so beer and alcohol is widely available and cheap, which explains the popularity with the foreign crowd. Some stretches of beach are informally Malaysian and some our foreign. You can tell by the swimwear. It is a nylon burka? It's the Malaysian end of the beach. It is a string bikini? Farang. But it was crowded. We tried four guesthouses before finding a place that had two dorm beds, and regular readers know how I feel about dorm beds. We moved into better digs the following day. Over the next few days, we met up with Tatjana's friend, Julia, and rode the Langkawi cable car, pictured above. This cable car is pretty intense. It's like an plexiglass enclosed gondola that swoops up a mountainside 800 meters. It's quite steep, so steep that the operating hours are very dependent on the wind. At the very top, they've built an improbable sky bridge between two peaks. From there, you can see the island's beaches and smaller satellite islands as well as loads of student groups, honeymooners, and freaked-out folks. It's pretty dang high up there. The price of the tickets was on the high side, but it turned out to be the coolest thing we did in Langkawi, so do it if you're ever there.
The Chinese Lunar New Year was upon us, so it was time to ditch the beach and see something a little different. If Langkawi is a big island without a lot of people, Penang is a small island with the highest population density of any Malaysian island. Penang is thisclose to the mainland, and Georgetown is the old colonial town with its traditional shophouses and Chinese temples. Because of Chinese New Year, all the Chinese restaurants closed, and for the most part, very few ethnic Chinese were out and about. They were celebrating with family. But they were visiting temples too. That's a scene. We visited two temples in Penang, the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy and the Snake Temple. Both were swarming with the faithful and incense. Incense sticks in hands, in boxes full of sand in front of statues, huge pillars of incense, arranged in grids outside. So much incense I had to back away at certain points. But all those people and all that smoke gave the temples an air of hushed hubbub. Everyone is walking around, holding their incense sticks and bobbing them up and down in front of their bowed heads, lighting a candle, murmuring a prayer, burning a piece of offering paper. It's crowded and full of activity, but everyone is quietly doing their own thing. If I'd had a gas mask, I could have stayed all day.
The three of us also went to the Chinese Chief Minister's Open House. We had no idea what this was except there would be free food, and it was quite far from Georgetown, the tourist hub, so it was likely to be interesting. Great call on our parts. After a long bus ride, we get out at PISA, Penang's big stadium. Stadiums are large. And if it's not a game day, they always look...closed. As PISA did on this sunny day. But we kept walking around it, passing closed gate after gate until we found an open gate, and then a kindly young man standing over a hot wok showed us the way in. I'm still not clear on what our host's job responsibilities are, but he puts on a good buffet. One side Chinese food, the other Indian, Chinese and Indian dancers, and loads of Penangese. I made that word up by the way, but it might be right. Julia, Tatjana, and I found some seats, and met so many more lovely Malaysians, full of things to do in Penang, asking all kinds of questions about us. Eventually, a man named Chandra and his adorable son and daughter gave us a ride to the Snake Temple, which was above and beyond but ever so appreciated.
The next day I flew to Singapore, thinking I'd spend a quick week there seeing it, before jetting off to India. I was very wrong about that.
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